Htaccess: Site error documents

.htaccess - Apache directory-level configuration file

Site error documents

Apache provides some bland error documents however you are not restricted to using these you can provide your own and match them to your sites look.

Whats errors produce what

The following are a list of the Apache error numbers and what they relate to:

Successful Client Requests	Client Request Errors	Server Errors
201 Created	400 Bad Request	500 Internal Server Error
202 Accepted	401 Authorization Required	501 Not Implemented
203 Non-Authorative Information	403 Forbidden	502 Bad Gateway
204 No Content	404 Not Found	503 Service Unavailable
205 Reset Content	405 Method Not Allowed	504 Gateway Timeout
206 Partial Content	406 Not Acceptable (encoding)	505 HTTP Version Not Supported
Client Request Redirected	407 Proxy Authentication Required
300 Multiple Choices	408 Request Timed Out
301 Moved Permanently	409 Conflicting Request
302 Moved Temporarily	410 Gone
303 See Other	411 Content Length Required
304 Not Modified	412 Precondition Failed
305 Use Proxy	413 Request Entity Too Long
	414 Request URI Too Long
	415 Unsupported Media Type

Note: There is no need to create error pages for all the above, following are worth considering: 401, 403, 404 and 500

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How to create customised error documents

Create a new folder in your root folder (www) and name it errors. This folder contains all the error pages you wish to display. For example not_found.html this will be displayed when a page cannot be found on your web site.

Now open the root htaccess file (the one in your root folder www) and add the following line:

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html

Save the file. The command ErrorDocument 404 will forward a user to yoursite/errors/not_found.html file when ever Apache produces the error 404.

Note 1: The files and folder can be named anything you like.
Note 2: You can use a full URL (as oppose to a virtual path) to your error file for example: http://yoursite.com/errors/not_found.html

If you create error pages for the above your htaccess file will look similar to this when using virtual paths:

ErrorDocument 401 /errors/auth_reqired.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/forbidden.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/server_error.html

Or look like similar to this if when using full URL paths:

ErrorDocument 401 http://yoursite.com/errors/auth_reqired.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://yoursite.com/errors/forbidden.html
ErrorDocument 404 http://yoursite.com/errors/not_found.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://yoursite.com/errors/server_error.html

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Example

The following shows a little more detail first create the error page to be displayed

Comment	Code
Create a new folder in www named errors. In this folder create a file named not_found.html Add the code shown on the right to it. Save the file	<html> <title>Not found</title> <body> <p>Example of a not found page</p> </body> </html>

Add the command to htaccess:

Comment

Code

Navigate to the root folder www.
Open the .htaccess file
Add the command shown on the right last line.
Save the file

# This file provides security to the server limiting access to the localhost only.
# Comment to deactivate.

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1

# To allow execution of cgi scripts in this directory uncomment next two lines. 

AddHandler cgi-script .pl .cgi
Options +ExecCGI

# To unlock your server, comment the next 4 lines.
# Defaults: Username = admin; Password = userver

#AuthName "Uniform Server - Secure Server Access"
#AuthType Basic
#AuthUserFile /htpasswd/www/.htpasswd
#Require valid-user

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html

Testing

Run the server using Server_Start.bat
In the browser address bar type http:/localhost/fred.html or some other file that does not exist.
Apache will generate the error code 404 and redirect to your not_found.html page

Experiment with the ErrorDocument command and create a few pages.

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Ric